Mortal Kombat – Worth the Kost?

Recently I learned of a revamp in the works for a new Mortal Kombat game. My ears perked up, but somehow I lost attention for it before the games release. However, the dual release of this game and Portal 2 on the same week in April made it a hard decision. Should I get this game, or Portal 2? Portal 2 got the purchase, and I put this off for a while. It’s hard to justify spending 60 dollars on a video game, especially a fighter that could potentially have no replay value, and had relatively little content.

I recently rented this title through Gamefly, and I couldn’t tell you how wrong I was to think that this game was limited by the content. In fact, I spent more time on this rental that I probably have on Portal 2 (even with that stupid Smash TV achievement). Mortal Kombat has a plethora of additional content, as well as a varied amount of game modes. There is: Story Mode (1 player), Tournament Ladder (classic version of story modes with ONE or TWO characters), Training Mode, Fatality Trainer, Test Your Might, Test Your Luck, Test Your Sight, Test Your Strike, King of the Hill, even an un-lockable gallery deemed “The Krypt” for diehard fans of the series.

Seemingly inundated with all of this, I jumped into single player mode. There are around twenty-seven playable characters that you play with throughout the game (28 with PS3), each with their own special moves, throws, etc. You know what that means? The infamous fatalities are back for each one of the fighters. Which means that I had lots of fun playing through the story.

List of all playable characters, including the DLC ones, from a PS3 screenshot.

As far as the story line goes, it is one of the most fun and interesting titles I have played in a long time. Especially for a fighting game, never have I seen more effort put into the history of the storyline, and Mortal Kombat retells the last three games perfectly. With the end of the world coming, Raiden sends himself visions from the future, in order to alter the present and prevent the evil Shao Khan from consuming Earth Realm. It’s a bit confusing, and there are seemingly useless fights. It’s almost as if the developer (NetherRealm Studios, formerly Midway) was desperately attempting to create fights to lengthen the story. As well, most of the characters seemingly die off all at once at a certain point, making it…seem to go flat. Besides those points, it’s an excellent game.

Gameplay seems to run rather smoothly, and not too many glitches. In fact, the standard frames per second seemed higher than just 30 a second. Very well crafted, so we can see babalities in full HD:

How I feel when this game kicks my ass over and over

The final boss in the game, however, is one of the most unfair and rage inducing experiences I have had in a long time. Shao Khan’s body is made completely of carbon fiber and the blood of innocents, so basically a fireball from Liu Kang is like a poke to him. I would compare this experience to climbing Mount Everest covered in oil with some dick stepping on your fingers. Seriously, it gets worse when you can’t easily move away from his death attacks.

All in all, I wish I had more time to play this game. I’ve only spent ten hours on it at the most, and it’s easily my favorite fighting game. This kind of game should be the new industry standard. However, it is so difficult and flaws in the story leave something to be desired from the final product.